


Sweet Tooth

by DrGaybelGideon



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Comfort Food, Food
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-28
Updated: 2016-08-28
Packaged: 2018-08-11 11:10:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7889170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DrGaybelGideon/pseuds/DrGaybelGideon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Frederick's cheated death enough times to guiltlessly buy an ice cream tub.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sweet Tooth

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Chiltonsfluffyhair](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chiltonsfluffyhair/gifts).



Frederick Chilton- his mother loves to crow at family gatherings, making his face far more flushed than the knitted jumpers he’s annually shoved in- could only be described as a fat child.  
He’s over that now, he reassures himself, he eats healthily, is a far smaller frame than his bones and genetics naturally allow. Keeps an extra five pounds on for safekeeping, a choice he’s helped to make by the bags of popcorn that dissappear down his throat on his bi-weekly trips to the cinema.  
Abel Gideon brings him up to ten.  
He stress eats. Discovers McDonalds, fast food, the kinds Hannibal would disown him for eating. Most importantly, Frederick discovers the endless comfort ice-cream allows in the dead hours.  
They serve ice-cream to tonsillitis patients, he notices resentfully during his first arduous hospital stay. If only Gideon had taken those.  
Hannibal’s fattening him up, the thought makes him bite back a small snort as he inhales a far-too pleasant vegetable lasagna.  
The same thought’s not as pleasant after he’s arrested.  
He gets ice-cream on his second stay, bland and flavorless in a way he’s more upset to find is just its taste rather than his tongue being damaged by the gunshot.  
What a thought.  
  
Frederick’s impromptu, pack-a-case-and-buy-the-next ticket holiday is more about getting back in touch with himself than food. He reclaims himself by discharging two weeks early from hospital and booking a flight as cheap and as far away from bloodstained counters and FBI agents and the cloying smell of copper that still sticks in his throat as possible, which turns out to be France: an event his wool jumper impulsivity hadn’t led him to be properly dressed for.  
Frederick improvises. Hides his face under newly bought sunhats, wanders around Saint-Tropez in cheap cotton shirts, has fun buying the ugliest patterns he can and imagining the look on Hannibal’s face as he buttons them up on a morning. (He’s sure he spots the man in a busy market once. No matter. He’s probably just projecting his new hatred of well cheekboned men onto some poor civillian just trying to enjoy his lunch. Although-)  
He’s wearing a particularly foul yellow shirt with pineapples and picking his way through his holiday’s ninth salad- he’s slimming down, he decides, for good this time- when he learns the meaning of the phrase ‘crème glacée’. It’s crowed by the old woman sitting near him, accompanied with a finger-clicking gesture he imagines might incur some unpleasant bodily additions to her food.  
And then it’s there, and Frederick would still eat it even if his prediction was true, because it’s a serving dish of ice-creams, different colours and flavours, slightly melting in France’s permenant heat and making his stomach growl so obviously that the woman actually turns to stare, an invitation to go back to his newspaper that he claims with an embarrased cough.  
No, his brain argues with his stomach’s protests, the diet is final this time. No ifs, no buts.  
He gets up to walk away, swayed enough by his mind’s determination that his legs walk for him whilst his mind still agonises- and then his eyes make him stay.  
It’s there. His shameful weakness is there in all its tacky blue glory, the same bubblegum ice cream he’d buy by the gallon at home and bury his face in. Disgusting.  
He’s fumbling for cash and the proper accents to order four scoops before he can change his mind.  
  
The expected feeling of guilt doesn’t hit Frederick as he buries his toes in the cool underlayer of too-hot sand and relaxes, pausing every now and then to lick the small melted streaks from the side of his hand. He’s glad he doesn’t feel guilty, glad he’s relaxed enough to accept that Hannibal and his injuries haven’t ruined this too. He even goes to unbutton an embarrasingly straining shirt button before deciding no, he’s not quite ready to let that shame air quite yet.  
But he’s sure he’ll grow. Work up to it. Evolve, the same way he’s already evolved to nervously taking off his sunhat and staring behind shades at every stranger who goes past, waiting for eyes to drop to his face scar.  
They haven’t yet. One pretty waitress even meets his eyes and smiles at him, recieving the tip he skeptically decides she was hoping for.  
But she met his eyes. Frederick decides that warrants a third and final dairy celebration. Pistachio, pomegranate or mint chocolate chip?


End file.
